kevin strong - Page 49 - Developer IT

how to get form data as a object in jquery

- by kevin

i have tried jQuery('#form_id').serialize(). this returns only the form data as a url encoded string. is it possible to get the form data as an object?

Codeigniter: Using data in a controller

I'm new to php and CI, and I'm having some trouble in my controller. I feel that I'm doing this the wrong way, and it could be easier, I just don't know the syntax: $data['members'] = $this->home_model->getUser($id); $credit = $this->home_model->getCredit($id); if ($credit == '0'){stuff...} So I'm getting the user's data that has their the same information as "getCredit" does, but I don't know how to get the single variable that I need for my if statement... How can I just use the "getUser" function so that I'm not pulling redundant information?

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VB.Net: Class Inheritance make one class another

- by Kevin

I have an organization that has clients and students, every student begins as a client. If I have a Client class and a student class that inherits from client. How do I make a client a student?

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Will the program installed in a folder function properly if I remove the write permission in linux? [on hold]

- by Kevin Powell

I have a user account on a cluster( a server), and can only install program like python on the home folder. In case I might accidentally delete the bin, lib, share,include folders coming with the installation of python on the home folder. I change the permissions of the above folder like this chmod -w folder but I am worried when the program need to write/delete some files of the folders, it might not function because the removal of write permission. Am I right? or I the run, including write files in the folder, of a program have permissions different than the permission of user. BTW, is there a way to hide the folders without changing the names?

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JSON.parse vs. eval()

- by Kevin Major

My Spider Sense warns me that using eval() to parse incoming JSON is a bad idea. I'm just wondering if JSON.parse() - which I assume is a part of JavaScript and not a browser-specific function - is more secure.

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Sorting by value with ORDER BY?

- by Kevin

For clarification, are you able to use MySQL this way to sort? ORDER BY CompanyID = XXX DESC What I am trying to do is use one sql query to sort everything where X = Y, in this case, where CompanyID = XXX. All values where CompanyID is not XXX should come after all the results where CompanyID = XXX. I don't want to limit my query but I do want to sort a particular company above other listings.

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Do spaces in your URL (%20) have a negative impact on SEO?

- by Kevin

All the articles I Googled on this subject are dated back in 2004-2005. Basically I am structuring precanned searches, and it is based off of categories the client will input. Example content/(term name)/index.htm Does it matter if I used the raw term with a space, which is converted to %20 in the URL, or should I convert the link to '-' and remove that before querying for results? I already have it working, but does anyone know if this definitely has a negative impact on SEO and ranking?

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Want a headless build server for SSDT without installing Visual Studio? You’re out of luck!

- by jamiet

An issue that regularly seems to rear its head on my travels is that of headless build servers for SSDT. What does that mean exactly? Let me give you my interpretation of it. A SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) project incorporates a build process that will basically parse all of the files within the project and spit out a .dacpac file. Where an organisation employs a Continuous Integration process they will likely want to automate the building of that dacpac whenever someone commits a change to the source control repository. In order to do that the organisation will use a build server (e.g. TFS, TeamCity, Jenkins) and hence that build server requires all the pre-requisite software that understands how to build an SSDT project. The simplest way to install all of those pre-requisites is to install SSDT itself however a lot of folks don’t like that approach because it installs a lot unnecessary components on there, not least Visual Studio itself. Those folks (of which i am one) are of the opinion that it should be unnecessary to install a heavyweight GUI in order to simply get a few software components required to do something that inherently doesn’t even need a GUI. The phrase “headless build server” is often used to describe a build server that doesn’t contain any heavyweight GUI tools such as Visual Studio and is a desirable state for a build server. In his blog post Headless MSBuild Support for SSDT (*.sqlproj) Projects Gert Drapers outlines the steps necessary to obtain a headless build server for SSDT: This article describes how to install the required components to build and publish SQL Server Data Tools projects (*.sqlproj) using MSBuild without installing the full SQL Server Data Tool hosted inside the Visual Studio IDE. http://sqlproj.com/index.php/2012/03/headless-msbuild-support-for-ssdt-sqlproj-projects/ Frankly however going through these steps is a royal PITA and folks like myself have longed for Microsoft to support headless build support for SSDT by providing a distributable installer that installs only the pre-requisites for building SSDT projects. Yesterday in MSDN forum thread Building a VS2013 headless build server - it's sooo hard Mike Hingley complained about this very thing and it prompted a response from Kevin Cunnane from the SSDT product team: The official recommendation from the TFS / Visual Studio team is to install the version of Visual Studio you use on the build machine. I, like many others, would rather not have to install full blown Visual Studio and so I asked: Is there any chance you'll ever support any of these scenarios: Installation of all build/deploy pre-requisites without installing the VS shell? TFS shipping with all of the pre-requisites for doing SSDT project build/deploys 3rd party build servers (e.g. TeamCity) shipping with all of the requisites for doing SSDT project build/deploys I have to say that the lack of a single installer containing all the pre-requisites for SSDT build/deploy puzzles me. Surely the DacFX installer would be a perfect vehicle for that? Kevin replied again: The answer is no for all 3 scenarios. We looked into this issue, discussed it with the Visual Studio / TFS team, and in the end agreed to go with their latest guidance which is to install Visual Studio (e.g. VS2013 Express for Web) on the build machine. This is how Visual Studio Online is doing it and it's the approach recommended for customers setting up their own TFS build servers. I would hope this is compatible with 3rd party build servers but have not verified whether this works with TeamCity etc. Note that DacFx MSI isn't a suitable release vehicle for this as we don't want to include Visual Studio/MSBuild dependencies in that package. It's meant to just include the core DacFx DLLs used by SSMS, SqlPackage.exe on the command line, etc. What this means is we won't be providing a separate MSI installer or nuget package with just the necessary build DLLs you need to run your build and tests. If someone wanted to create a script that generated a nuget package based on our DLLs and targets files, then release that somewhere on the web for easier integration with 3rd party build servers we've no problem with that. Again, here’s the link to the thread and its worth reading in its entirety if this is something that interests you. So there you have it. Microsoft will not be be providing support for headless build servers for SSDT but if someone in the community wants to go ahead and roll their own, go right ahead. @Jamiet

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Silverlight Cream for February 07, 2011 -- #1043

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Roy Dallal, Kevin Dockx, Gill Cleeren, Oren Gal, Colin Eberhardt, Rudi Grobler, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Kirupa Chinnathambi, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger(-2-), Beth Massi, and Michael Crump. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel" Colin Eberhardt WP7: "Isolated Storage" Jesse Liberty Lightswitch: "How To Create Outlook Appointments from a LightSwitch Application" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Gergely Orosz has a summary of his 4-part series on Styles in Silverlight: Everything a Developer Needs To Know From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Memory Leak, Part 2 Roy Dallal has part 2 of his memory leak posts up... and discusses the results of runnin VMMap and some hints on how to make best use of it. Using a Channel Factory in Silverlight (instead of adding a Service Reference). With cows. Kevin Dockx has a post up for those of you that don't like the generated code that comes about when adding a service reference, and the answer is a Channel Factory... and he has an example app in the post that populates a list of cows... honest ... check it out. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 4) Gill Cleeren has Part 4 of his deep-dive into studying for the Silverlight Certification exam. This time out he's got probably half a gazillion links for working with data... seriously! Sync unlimited instances of one Silverlight application How about a cross-browser sync of an unlimited number of instances of the same Silverlight app... Oren Gal has just that going on, and discusses his first two attempts and how he finally honed in on the solution. A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel Wow... check out what Colin Eberhardt's done with the "Progress Bar" ... using an Attached View Model which he discussed in a post a while back... these are awesome! WP7 - Professional Audio Recorder Rudi Grobler discusses an audio recorder for WP7 that uses the NAudio audio library for not only the recording but visualization. Isolated Storage Jesse Liberty's got his 30th 'From Scratch' post up and this time he's talking about Isolated Storage. Learning OData? MSDN and Shawn Wildermuth has the videos for you! Shawn Wildermuth produced a couple series of videos for MSDN on OData: Getting Started and Consuming OData... get the link on Shawn's post. Creating Sample Data from a Class - Page 1 Kirupa Chinnathambi shows us how to use a schema of your own design in Blend... yet still have Blend produce sample data A Pivot-Style Data Grid without the DataGrid Jeremy Likness discusses the lack of an open-source grid with dynamic columns ... let him know if you've done one! ... and then he continues on to demonstrate his build-out of the same. Synchronize a freeform drawing and a real path creation Martin Krüger has a few new samples up in the Expression Gallery. This first is taking mouse movement in an InkPresenter and creating path statements from it in a canvas and playing them back. How to: use Storyboard completed behaviors Martin Krüger's next post is about Storyboards and firing one off the end of another, in Blend... so he ended up producing a behavior for doing that... and it's in the Expression Gallery How To Create Outlook Appointments from a LightSwitch Application Beth Massi has a new Lightswitch post up... her previous was email from Lightswitch... this is Outlook appointments... pretty darn cool. Quick run through of the WP7 Developer Tools January 2011 Michael Crump has a really good Quick look at the new WP7 Dev Tools that were released last week posted on his blog Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Silverlight Cream for March 08, 2011 -- #1056

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Joost van Schaik, Manas Patnaik, Kevin Hoffman, Jesse Liberty, Deborah Kurata, Dhananjay Kumar, Dennis Delimarsky, Samuel Jack, Peter Kuhn, WindowsPhoneGeek, and Jfo. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "How I let the trees grow" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Simple Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight drag/flick behavior" Joost van Schaik Shoutouts: SilverlightShow has their top 5 from last week posted, plus the ECOContest is ready to be voted on: SilverlightShow for Feb 28 - March 06, 2011 Drew DeVault is a young man involved with the Microsoft Student Insiders. He gave a WP7 presentation at RMTT and has posted his material: Post-Session: Windows Phone 7 @ RMTT Rui Marinho has an app in the ECO Contest called Forest Findr. is based on the BIng Map Control for silverlight and Sql Spatial data, and helps you find Forests and get geolocated pictures and wikipedia information, and has a post up with a bunch of info on it here: Forest Findr. my entry on the SilverlightShow EcoContest From SilverlightCream.com: Simple Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight drag/flick behavior Joost van Schaik has a behavior that makes *anything* draggable and 'flickable' in WP7 ... read the intro, scroll to the bottom to watch the demo, and then grab up the code... cool stuff, Joost! Data Aggregation Using Presentation Model in RIA and Silverlight 4 Manas Patnaik sent me a link to his blog, and it appears he's got lots of Silverlight goodness out there so you'll be hearing more about him. This first post is on the Presentation Model in RIA and Silverlight 4... good discussion, diagrams and code... good job, Manas! WP7 for iPhone and Android Developers - Advanced UI Kevin Hoffman has part 3 of an ambitious 12-part tutorial series up on WP7 development ... this go-around is concentrating on Advanced UI - Panorama/Pivot controls, DataBinding, ObservableCollections, and Converters... whew! Sterling DB on top of Isolated Storage – 2 Jesse Liberty has part 2 of his Sterling series up... this time setting up the database in App.xaml so it can be used for dealing with tombstoning. Silverlight Charting: Formatting the Tick Marks Deborah Kurata's next chart tutorial is all about showing you how to continue to dress up your charts.. this time by formatting the tick marks... if you don't know what that is... check out the first image in the post. Stored Procedure in WCF Data Service Dhananjay Kumar has a very nice tutorial up on using a stored proc with WCF Data Services... I happen to know someone working on just that at this time. If you have this in mind, here's a step-by-step guide to getting it done. Windows Phone 7 – Episode 5 – Pages Dennis Delimarsky has part 5 of his WP7 tutorial series up and is discussing Pages in this 17 minute video. Unpacking Simon Squared: My mini framework-independent animation library Samuel Jack has not only Open-Sourced the WP7 game he built and blogged about, but he's now explaining some of the structure of the game in posts such as this one about the animation library he wrote that his game is built on. How I let the trees grow Peter Kuhn shares with us the code he used for the tree animation in his ECO Contest entry. There's a lot to learn in this post about performance ... the fully-animated tree has about 20K elements... 5K branches and 20K leaves... check it out. WP7 ToastPrompt in depth WindowsPhoneGeek takes a deep dive into the ToastPrompt control in the Coding4fun Toolkit... everything you need to completely use the control including sample code. Beware the loaded event Jfo talks about another frustration point she had with WP7 development, and that is around the use of the loaded event... read these tips from someone that's been there. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Silverlight Cream for February 17, 2011 -- #1048

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Oren Gal, Andrea Boschin(-2-), Kevin Hoffman, Rudi Grobler(-2-, -3-), Michael Crump, Yochay Kiriaty, Peter Kuhn, Loek van den Ouweland, Jeremy Likness, Jesse Liberty, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Multiple page printing in Silverlight4 - Part 2 - preview before printing" Oren Gal WP7: "Windows Phone 7 Tombstoning with MVVM and Sterling" Jeremy Likness XNA: "XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 4 - Animation (frame-based)" Peter Kuhn From SilverlightCream.com: Multiple page printing in Silverlight4 - Part 2 - preview before printing Oren Gal has part 2 of his Printing with Silverlight 4 series up, and this time he's putting up a preview... how cool is that? Inject ApplicationServices with MEF reloaded: supporting recomposition Andrea Boschin revisited his Inject ApplicationServices with MEF post because of feedback, and took it from the realm of an interesting example to a useful solution. Windows Phone 7 - Part #5: Panorama and Pivot controls Andrea Boschin also has part 5 of his WP7 series up at SilverlightShow... want a good demo of both the panorama and the pivot controls... here it is all in one tutorial WP7 for iPhone and Android Developers - Introduction to C# This should be good.. a 12-part series on SilverlightShow by Kevin Hoffman on porting your iPhone/Android app to WP7... this first part an intro to C# Balls of Steel Rudi Grobler discusses the upcoming (?) release of 'Duke Nukem Forever', and has a 'soundboard' for WP7 to celebrate the event... get your Duke Nukem on with these sounds! Moonlight 4 (Preview) is here Rudi Grobler also has a post up about the release of Moonlight by Novel for Silverlight 4!... explanation and links on his post. WP7 Podcasts Rudi Grobler highlights two WP7 Podcasts that are putting out good material... check them out if you haven't already. Having Fun with Coding4Fun’s Windows Phone 7 Controls Michael Crump takes a look at his WP7 app and uses the Coding4Fun project toolset while doing so... getting the tools, setting them up, and consuming them. Windows Phone Silverlight Application Faster Load Time Yochay Kiriaty has a good long discussion up about how to get faster load time out of your WP7 apps... good useful external links throughout. XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 4 - Animation (frame-based) Peter Kuhn's part 4 of his XNA for Silverlight devs is up at Silverlightshow and is a great tutorial on frame-based animation. Windows Phone SoundEffect clipping Loek van den Ouweland has some good information about soudn clips on WP7... the solutions aren't always code solutions.... good to know info. Windows Phone 7 Tombstoning with MVVM and Sterling Jeremy Likness is discussing Tombstoning via MVVM and Sterling... read on how Sterling gives you a leg up on the Tombstone express. Video: Reactive Phone Programming For Windows Phone 7 Fitting in nicely with his podcast on Reactive Programming, Jesse Liberty releases a video on Reactive Programming for WP7. Talking about Data Binding in WP7 | Coding4fun TextBoxBinding helper in depth WindowsPhoneGeek's latest post walks through WP7 databinding in detail with lots of good external links, then follows up with a discussion of the Coding4Fun Binding Helpers Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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ATG Live Webcast June 14: Technical Preview of EBS 12.2 Online Patching

- by BillSawyer

Online Patching is is one of the cornerstone new features in our upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 release. This ground-breaking feature is based upon Edition-Based Redefinition, a new 11gR2 Database feature that was built to Oracle Applications division specifications to allow the E-Business Suite's database tier to be patched while the environment is running. Online Patching combines the use of Edition-Based Redefinition and new E-Business Suite technologies to allow patching to the E-Business Suite's database and application tier servers while the environment is being actively used by its end-users. This webcast provides a detailed technical preview of: How this new feature works How it affects E-Business Suite end-users How it affects E-Business Suite database administrators and patching lifecycles How it affects developers and third-party software vendors responsible for E-Business Suite customizations and extensions The presenter for this event is Kevin Hudson, Senior Director and one of the Online Patching architects. There will be a special extended Q&A Session at the end of this presentation, given the nature of the materials and the questions that we expect from you. ATG Development staff supporting the Q&A session will include Elke Phelps, Santiago Bastidas, Max Arderius, and other ATG architects. Date: Thursday, June 14, 2012Time: 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (Special 2-hour Time)Presenter: Kevin Hudson, Senior Director, Applications Technology IntegrationWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged) To hear the audio feed: Domestic Participant Dial-In Number: 877-697-8128 International Participant Dial-In Number: 706-634-9568 Dial-In Passcode: 100815To see the presentation: The Direct Access Web Conference details are: Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com Meeting Number: 597470987If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University. You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here. When will Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 be released? Oracle's Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates, but you're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog. We'll post updates here as soon as soon as they're available.

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Silverlight Cream for February 21, 2011 -- #1049

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Rob Eisenberg(-2-), Gill Cleeren, Colin Eberhardt, Alex van Beek, Ishai Hachlili, Ollie Riches, Kevin Dockx, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Jesse Liberty(-2-), and John Papa. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight 4: Creating useful base classes for your views and viewmodels with PRISM 4" Alex van Beek WP7: "Google Sky on Windows Phone 7" Colin Eberhardt Shoutouts: My friends at SilverlightShow have their top 5 for last week posted: SilverlightShow for Feb 14 - 20, 2011 From SilverlightCream.com: Rob Eisenberg MVVMs Us with Caliburn.Micro! Rob Eisenberg chats with Carl and Richard on .NET Rocks episode 638 about Caliburn.Micro which takes Convention-over-Configuration further, utilizing naming conventions to handle a large number of data binding, validation and other action-based characteristics in your app. Two Caliburn Releases in One Day! Rob Eisenberg also announced that release candidates for both Caliburn 2.0 and Caliburn.Micro 1.0 are now available. Check out the docs and get the bits. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 6) Gill Cleeren has Part 6 of his series on getting ready for the Silverlight Exam up at SilverlightShow.... this time out, Gill is discussing app startup, localization, and using resource dictionaries, just to name a few things. Google Sky on Windows Phone 7 Colin Eberhardt has a very cool WP7 app described where he's using Google Sky as the tile source for Bing Maps, and then has a list of 110 Messier Objects.. interesting astronomical objects that you can look at... all with source! Silverlight 4: Creating useful base classes for your views and viewmodels with PRISM 4 Alex van Beek has some Prism4/Unity MVVM goodness up with this discussion of a login module using View and ViewModel base classes. Windows Phone 7 and WCF REST – Authentication Solutions Ishai Hachlili sent me this link to his post about WCF REST web service and authentication for WP7, and he offers up 2 solutions... from the looks of this, I'm also putting his blog on my watch list WP7Contrib: Isolated Storage Cache Provider Ollie Riches has a complete explanation and code example of using the IsolatedStorageCacheProvider in their WP7Contrib library. Using a ChannelFactory in Silverlight, part two: binary cows & new-born calves Kevin Dockx follows-up his post on Channel Factories with this part 2, expanding the knowledge-base into usin parameters and custom binding with binary encoding, both from reader suggestions. All about UriMapping in WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek has a post up about URI mappings in WP7 ... what it is, how to enable it in code behind or XAML, then using it either with a hyperlink button or via the NavigationService class... all with code. Passing WP7 Memory Consumption requirements with the Coding4Fun MemoryCounter tool WindowsPhoneGeek's latest is a tutorial on the use of the Memory Counter control from the Coding4Fun toolkit and WP7 Memory consumption. Getting Started With Linq Jesse Liberty gets into LINQ in his Episode 33 of his WP7 'From Scratch' series... looks like a good LINQ starting point, and he's going to be doing a series on it. Linq with Objects In his second post on LINQ, Jesse Liberty is looking at creating a Linq query against a collection of objects... always good stuff, Jesse! Silverlight TV Silverlight TV 62: The Silverlight 5 Triad Unplugged John Papa is joined by Sam George, Larry Olson, and Vijay Devetha (the Silverlight Triad) on this Silverlight TV episode 62 to discuss how the team works together, and hey... they're hiring! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Microsoft Build 2012 Day 1 Keynote Summary

- by Tim Murphy

So I have finally dried the tears after watching the Keynote for Build 2012. This wasn’t because it was an emotional presentation, but because for the second year I missed the goodies. Each on site attendee got a Surface RT, a Lumia 920 and a voucher for 100GB of SkyDrive storage. The event was opened with the announcement that in the three days since the launch of Windows 8 over 4 million upgrades have been sold. I don’t care who you are that is an impressive stat. Ballmer then spent a fair amount of time remaking the case for the Windows and Windows Phone platforms similar to what we have heard over the last to launch events. There were some cool, but non-essential demos. The one that was the most fun was the Perceptive Pixel 82” slate device. At first glance I wondered why I would ever want such a device, but then Ballmer explained it’s possible use for schools and boardrooms. The actually made sense. Then things got strange. Steve started explaining features that developers could leverage. Usually this type of information is left to the product leads. He focused on the integration with the Charms features such as Search and Share. Steve “Guggs” Guggenheim showed off an app that would appeal to my kids from Disney called “Agent P” which is base on Phineas and Ferb. Then he got to the meat of the presentation. We found out that you could add a tile that can be used to sell ad space. In the same vein we also found out that you could use Microsoft’s, Paypal’s or any commerce engine of your own creation or choosing. For those who are interested in sports and especially developing sports apps you would have found the small presentation from Michael Bayle of ESPN. He introduced the ESPN app which has tons of features. For the developers in the crowd he also mentioned that ESPN has an API available at developer.espn.com. During the launch events we were told apps were coming. In this presentation we were actually shown a scrolling list of logos and told about a couple of them. Ballmer mentioned specifically Twitter, SAP and DropBox. These are impressive names that were just a couple of the list impressive names. Steve Ballmer addressed the question of why you should develop for the Windows 8 platform. He feels that Microsoft has the best commercial terms for developers, a better way to build apps than other platforms and a variety of form factors. His key point though was the available volume of customers given the current Windows install base and assuming even a flat growth of the platform. This he backed with a promise that Microsoft is going to do better at marketing and you won’t be able to avoid the ads that they are bringing out. The last section of the key note was present by Kevin Gallo from the Windows Phone team. This was the real reason I tuned into the webcast. He impressed upon those watching that the strength of developing for the Microsoft platform is the common programming model that now exist. While there are difference between form factor implementations you can leverage code across them. He claimed that 90% of developer requests for Windows Phone 8 had been implemented. These include: More controls with better performance Better live tiles including lock screen integration Speech support in custom apps Easier submission to the market place App camera integration VOIP and chat support Bluetooth and NFC support Native C++ development Direct 3D development The quote from Kevin that stood out for me was that “Take your Dramamine and buckle your seatbelt type of games are coming to Windows Phone 8”. He back this up by displaying a list of game development frameworks and then having Unity come out and do a demo. Ok, almost done … The last two things of note for me were the announcement that the SDK is immediately available at dev.windowsphone.com and that they were reducing the cost of an individual developer account to $8 for the next 8 days. Let the development commence. del.icio.us Tags: Build 2012,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Windows Phone

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Why won't "!important" override ":first-line"?

- by bazzlevi

I am trying to do the tutorial in Chapter 6 of the 2nd edition of "CSS: The Missing Manual", and I've run into an issue I'm trying to understand. I have one style that looks like this: #main p:first-line { color: #999999; font-weight: bold; } Later I have another style that looks like this: #main p.byline { color: #00994D !important; font-size: 1.6em; margin: 5px 0 25px 50px; } I am confused because the second one won't override the color choice in the first one despite the fact that the second one has "!important" in it. I put both classes into an online specificity calculator, and the second one comes out being more specific, so I'm doubly confused. By the way, the inclusion of "!important" is the work-around suggested in the errata for the book. Odd that it still doesn't work! Here's the code for the entire page: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title>CSS Typography</title> <style type="text/css"> html, body, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, ol, ul, li, pre, code, address, variable, form, fieldset, blockquote { padding: 0; margin: 0; font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal; } table { border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0; } td, th, caption { font-weight: normal; text-align: left; } img, fieldset { border: 0; } ol { padding-left: 1.4em; list-style: decimal; } ul { padding-left: 1.4em; list-style:square; } q:before, q:after { content:''; } body { color: #002D4B; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 62.5% } #main h1 { color: #F60; font-family: "Arial Black", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4em; } #main h2 { font: bold 3.5em "Hoefler Text", Garamond, Times, serif; border-bottom: 1px solid #002D4B; margin-top: 25px; } #main h3 { color: #F60; font-size: 1.9em; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; } #main p { font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 150%; margin-left: 150px; margin-right: 50px; margin-bottom: 10px; } #main p:first-line { color: #999999; font-weight: bold; } #main ul { margin: 50px 0 25px 50px; width: 150px; float: right; } #main li { color: #207EBF; font-size: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 7px; } #main p.byline { color: #00994D !important; font-size: 1.6em; margin: 5px 0 25px 50px; } #main .byline strong { color: #207EBF; text-transform: uppercase; margin-left: 5px; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="main"> <h1><strong>CSS</strong> The Missing Manual</h1> <h2>Exploring Typographic Possibilities</h2> <p class="byline">november 30 <strong>Rod Dibble</strong></p> <ul> <li>Lorem Ipsum</li> <li>Reprehenderit qui in ea</li> <li>Lorem Ipsum</li> <li>Reprehenderit qui in ea</li> <li>Lorem Ipsum</li> <li>Reprehenderit qui in ea</li> </ul> <h3>Esse quam nulla</h3> <p>Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur? Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?</p> <h3>Quis autem vel eum</h3> <p>Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur? Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?</p> </div> </body> </html> Here is the above code on JSBin: http://jsbin.com/unexe3

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XML transform element appearing in wrong place in document

- by Mike

I am having some problems with an XML transform and need some help. The stylesheet should iterate through all suffix elements and place the contents without the suffix tag next to the last text node within its first ancestor quote-block element (see desired ouput). It works when only a single suffix is present, but not when 2 are present, when 2 are present it places both suffixes next to each other in the last text node of the first quote-block. Any ideas? I have tried limiting the selections to ancestor::quote-block[1] in various places but that doesn't have the desired effect. Source XML <paragraph> <para> <quote-block> <list prefix-rules="specified"> <item prefix="“B42"> <para id="0a84d149-91b7-4012-ac6d-9f4eb8ed6c37">In June 2000, EME and EWS reached an agreement to negotiate towards a direct contract for coal haulage by rail (on a DIY basis), which would replace the previous indirect E2E arrangements that EME had in place with ECSL. An internal EWS e-mail noted: <quote-block> <quote-para>‘We did the deal with Edison Mission yesterday morning for LBT-Fiddlers @ £[…]/tonne as agreed. This rate until 16th September pending a contract.</quote-para> <quote-para><emphasis strength="strong">Enron are now off our hands so far as Edison are concerned. The Enron flows we have left are to British Energy’s station at Eggborough; from Immingham, Redcar and Hull</emphasis>. Also to Enron’s own power station at Wilton – 250,000 tonnes/year. I think we are stuck Enron [sic] on the Eggborough traffic until next April when British Energy will, hopefully take over their own coal procurement. <emphasis strength="strong">But we have got them out of Fiddlers Ferry and Ferrybridge – a big step forward</emphasis>.’</quote-para> <suffix>(Emphasis added.)</suffix> </quote-block> </para> </item> <item prefix="B43"> <para id="d64a5a72-0a02-476f-9a7b-7c07bbc93a8a">This e-mail is evidence of both EWS’s intent and, indeed, its success in stopping ECSL from carrying out indirect supplies to EME, one of the new generating companies.”</para> </item> </list> <suffix>(emphasis in original)</suffix> </quote-block> </para> </paragraph> Stylesheet <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://xml.sm.com/schema/cases/report" xmlns:sm="http://xml.sm.com/functions" xmlns:saxon="http://saxon.sf.net/" xpath-default-namespace="http://sm.com/schema/cases/report" exclude-result-prefixes="xs sm" version="2.0"> <xsl:output method="xml" indent="no"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="*"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*[*:quote-block and descendant::*:suffix]"> <xsl:call-template name="process-quote-block"/> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*[*:quote and descendant::*:suffix]"> <xsl:call-template name="process-quote-block"/> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template name="process-quote-block"> <xsl:variable name="quoteBlockCopy"> <xsl:copy-of select="."/> </xsl:variable> <xsl:apply-templates select="$quoteBlockCopy" mode="append-suffix"> <xsl:with-param name="suffix" select="sm:get-suffix-note(.)"/> <xsl:with-param name="end-node" select="sm:get-last-text-node($quoteBlockCopy)"/> </xsl:apply-templates> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*[*:quote-block and descendant::*:suffix][ancestor::*:quote-block[1]]" mode="create-copy"> <xsl:call-template name="process-quote-block"/> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*[*:quote and descendant::*:suffix]" mode="create-copy"> <xsl:call-template name="process-quote-block"/> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*" mode="append-suffix"> <xsl:param name="suffix"/> <xsl:param name="end-node"/> <xsl:copy> <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/> <xsl:apply-templates mode="append-suffix"> <xsl:with-param name="suffix" select="$suffix"/> <xsl:with-param name="end-node" select="$end-node"/> </xsl:apply-templates> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="text()[normalize-space() != '']" mode="append-suffix"> <xsl:param name="suffix"/> <xsl:param name="end-node"/> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="count(. | $end-node) = 1"> <xsl:value-of select="."/> <xsl:apply-templates select="$suffix"/> </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise>  <xsl:value-of select="."/> </xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </xsl:template>  <xsl:template match="*:suffix" mode="append-suffix"/> <xsl:function name="sm:get-suffix-note"> <xsl:param name="node"/> <xsl:sequence select="$node/descendant::*:suffix/node()"/> </xsl:function> <xsl:function name="sm:get-last-text-node">  <xsl:param name="node"/> <xsl:sequence select="reverse($node//text()[not(ancestor::*:suffix) and normalize-space() != ''])[1]"/> </xsl:function> </xsl:stylesheet> Current Output XML <paragraph> <para> <quote-block> <list prefix-rules="specified"> <item prefix="“B42"> <para id="0a84d149-91b7-4012-ac6d-9f4eb8ed6c37">In June 2000, EME and EWS reached an agreement to negotiate towards a direct contract for coal haulage by rail (on a DIY basis), which would replace the previous indirect E2E arrangements that EME had in place with ECSL. An internal EWS e-mail noted: <quote-block> <quote-para>‘We did the deal with Edison Mission yesterday morning for LBT-Fiddlers @ £[…]/tonne as agreed. This rate until 16th September pending a contract.</quote-para> <quote-para><emphasis strength="strong">Enron are now off our hands so far as Edison are concerned. The Enron flows we have left are to British Energy’s station at Eggborough; from Immingham, Redcar and Hull</emphasis>. Also to Enron’s own power station at Wilton – 250,000 tonnes/year. I think we are stuck Enron [sic] on the Eggborough traffic until next April when British Energy will, hopefully take over their own coal procurement. <emphasis strength="strong">But we have got them out of Fiddlers Ferry and Ferrybridge – a big step forward</emphasis>.’</quote-para> </quote-block> </para> </item> <item prefix="B43"> <para id="d64a5a72-0a02-476f-9a7b-7c07bbc93a8a">This e-mail is evidence of both EWS’s intent and, indeed, its success in stopping ECSL from carrying out indirect supplies to EME, one of the new generating companies.”(Emphasis added.)(emphasis in original)</para> </item> </list> </quote-block> </para> </paragraph> Desired Ouput <paragraph> <para> <quote-block> <list prefix-rules="specified"> <item prefix="“B42"> <para id="0a84d149-91b7-4012-ac6d-9f4eb8ed6c37">In June 2000, EME and EWS reached an agreement to negotiate towards a direct contract for coal haulage by rail (on a DIY basis), which would replace the previous indirect E2E arrangements that EME had in place with ECSL. An internal EWS e-mail noted: <quote-block> <quote-para>‘We did the deal with Edison Mission yesterday morning for LBT-Fiddlers @ £[…]/tonne as agreed. This rate until 16th September pending a contract.</quote-para> <quote-para><emphasis strength="strong">Enron are now off our hands so far as Edison are concerned. The Enron flows we have left are to British Energy’s station at Eggborough; from Immingham, Redcar and Hull</emphasis>. Also to Enron’s own power station at Wilton – 250,000 tonnes/year. I think we are stuck Enron [sic] on the Eggborough traffic until next April when British Energy will, hopefully take over their own coal procurement. <emphasis strength="strong">But we have got them out of Fiddlers Ferry and Ferrybridge – a big step forward</emphasis>.’(Emphasis added.)</quote-para> </quote-block> </para> </item> <item prefix="B43"> <para id="d64a5a72-0a02-476f-9a7b-7c07bbc93a8a">This e-mail is evidence of both EWS’s intent and, indeed, its success in stopping ECSL from carrying out indirect supplies to EME, one of the new generating companies.”(emphasis in original)</para> </item> </list> </quote-block> </para> </paragraph>

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Rails link to PDF version of show.html.erb

- by Danny McClelland

Hi Everyone, I have created a pdf version of our rails application using the Prawn plugin, the page in question is part of the Kase model - the link to the kase is /kases/1 and the link to the pdf version is /kases/1.pdf. How can I add a link within the show.html.erb to the PDF file so whichever page is being viewed it updates the URL to the correct case id? <% content_for :header do -%> <%=h @kase.jobno %> | <%=h @kase.casesubject %> <% end -%>  <% content_for :sidebar do -%> <% if @kase.avatar.exists? then %> <%= image_tag @kase.avatar.url %> <% else %> <p style="font-size:smaller"> You can upload an icon for this case that will display here. Usually this would be for the year number icon for easy recognition.</p> <% end %> <% end %>  <ul id="kases_showlist"> <li>Date Instructed: <span><%=h @kase.dateinstructed %></span></li> <li>Client Company: <span><%=h @kase.clientcompanyname %></span></li> <li>Client Reference: <span><%=h @kase.clientref %></span></li> <li>Case Subject: <span><%=h @kase.casesubject %></span></li> <li>Transport<span><%=h @kase.transport %></span></li> <li>Goods<span><%=h @kase.goods %></span></li> <li>Case Status: <span><%=h @kase.kase_status %></span></li> <li>Client Company Address: <span class="address"><%=h @kase.clientcompanyaddress %></span></li> <li>Client Company Fax: <span><%=h @kase.clientcompanyfax %></span></li> <li>Case Handler: <span><%=h @kase.casehandlername %></span></li> <li>Case Handler Tel: <span><%=h @kase.casehandlertel %></span></li> <li>Case Handler Email: <span><%=h @kase.casehandleremail %></span></li> <li>Claimant Name: <span><%=h @kase.claimantname %></span></li> <li>Claimant Address: <span class="address"><%=h @kase.claimantaddress %></span></li> <li>Claimant Contact: <span><%=h @kase.claimantcontact %></span></li> <li>Claimant Tel: <span><%=h @kase.claimanttel %></span></li> <li>Claiment Mob: <span><%=h @kase.claimantmob %></span></li> <li>Claiment Email: <span><%=h @kase.claimantemail %></span></li> <li>Claimant URL: <span><%=h @kase.claimanturl %></span></li> <li>Comments: <span><%=h @kase.comments %></span></li> </ul>  <div id="kase_finances"> <div class="js_option"> <h2>Financial Options</h2><p class="finance_showhide"><%= link_to_function "Show","Element.show('finance_showhide');" %> / <%= link_to_function "Hide","Element.hide('finance_showhide');" %></p> </div> <div id="finance_showhide" style="display:none"> <ul id="kases_new_finance"> <li>Invoice Number<span><%=h @kase.invoicenumber %></span></li> <li>Net Amount<span><%=h @kase.netamount %></span></li> <li>VAT<span><%=h @kase.vat %></span></li> <li>Gross Amount<span><%=h @kase.grossamount %></span></li> <li>Date Closed<span><%=h @kase.dateclosed %></span></li> <li>Date Paid<span><%=h @kase.datepaid %></span></li> </ul></div> </div>  <%= link_to 'Edit Case', edit_kase_path(@kase) %> | <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> | <a href="#">Top</a> <div style="width:120%; height: 50px; background-color: black; margin: 10px 0 0 -19px; padding: 0; background-color: #d4d4d4;"> </div> <div class="js_option_kaseemails"> <%= link_to_function "Show", "Element.show('newinstructionemail1');" %> / <%= link_to_function "Hide", "Element.hide('newinstructionemail1');" %> </div> <h3>New Instruction Email</h3> <div id="newinstructionemail1" style="display:none"> <p class="kase_email_output"> Hi,<br /> <br /> Many thanks for your instructions in the subject matter.<br /> <br /> We have allocated reference number <%=h @kase.jobno %> to the above claim.<br /> <br /> We have started our inquiries and will be in touch.<br /> <br /> Best Regards,<br /> <br /> <strong><%=h current_user.name %></strong> <br /> McClelland & Co<br /> PO Box 149<br /> Southport<br /> PR8 4GZ<br /> <br /> Tel: +(0) 1704 569871<br /> Fax: +(0) 1704 562234<br /> Mob: <%=h current_user.mobile %><br /> E-mail: <%= current_user.email %><br /> <br /> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you receive this e-mail in error please notify the originator of the message. <br /><br /> McClelland & Co has taken every reasonable precaution to ensure that any attachment to this e-mail has been checked for viruses but it is strongly recommended that you carry out your own virus check before opening any attachment. McClelland & Co cannot accept liability for any damage sustained as a result of software virus infection. </p> <%= link_to 'Edit Case', edit_kase_path(@kase) %> | <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> | <a href="#">Top</a> </div> <div style="width:120%; height: 20px; background-color: black; margin: 10px 0 0 -19px; padding: 0; background-color: #d4d4d4;"> </div> <div class="js_option_kaseemails"> <%= link_to_function "Show", "Element.show('newinstructionemail');" %> / <%= link_to_function "Hide", "Element.hide('newinstructionemail');" %> </div> <h3>New Instruction Email</h3> <div id="newinstructionemail" style="display:none"> <p class="kase_email_output"> Hi,<br /> <br /> Many thanks for your instructions in the subject matter.<br /> <br /> We have allocated reference number <%=h @kase.jobno %> to the above claim.<br /> <br /> We have started our inquiries and will be in touch.<br /> <br /> Best Regards,<br /> <br /> <strong><%=h current_user.name %></strong> <br /> McClelland & Co<br /> PO Box 149<br /> Southport<br /> PR8 4GZ<br /> <br /> Tel: +(0) 1704 569871<br /> Fax: +(0) 1704 562234<br /> Mob: <%=h current_user.mobile %><br /> E-mail: <%= current_user.email %><br /> <br /> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you receive this e-mail in error please notify the originator of the message. <br /><br /> McClelland & Co has taken every reasonable precaution to ensure that any attachment to this e-mail has been checked for viruses but it is strongly recommended that you carry out your own virus check before opening any attachment. McClelland & Co cannot accept liability for any damage sustained as a result of software virus infection. </p> <%= link_to 'Edit Case', edit_kase_path(@kase) %> | <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> | <a href="#">Top</a> </div> <div style="width:120%; height: 20px; background-color: black; margin: 10px 0 0 -19px; padding: 0; background-color: #d4d4d4;"> </div> <div class="js_option_kaseemails"> <%= link_to_function "Show", "Element.show('newinstructionemail2');" %> / <%= link_to_function "Hide", "Element.hide('newinstructionemail2');" %> </div> <h3>New Instruction Email</h3> <div id="newinstructionemail2" style="display:none;"> <p class="kase_email_output"> Hi,<br /> <br /> Many thanks for your instructions in the subject matter.<br /> <br /> We have allocated reference number <%=h @kase.jobno %> to the above claim.<br /> <br /> We have started our inquiries and will be in touch.<br /> <br /> Best Regards,<br /> <br /> <strong><%=h current_user.name %></strong> <br /> McClelland & Co<br /> PO Box 149<br /> Southport<br /> PR8 4GZ<br /> <br /> Tel: +(0) 1704 569871<br /> Fax: +(0) 1704 562234<br /> Mob: <%=h current_user.mobile %><br /> E-mail: <%= current_user.email %><br /> <br /> This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you receive this e-mail in error please notify the originator of the message. <br /><br /> McClelland & Co has taken every reasonable precaution to ensure that any attachment to this e-mail has been checked for viruses but it is strongly recommended that you carry out your own virus check before opening any attachment. McClelland & Co cannot accept liability for any damage sustained as a result of software virus infection. </p> <%= link_to 'Edit Case', edit_kase_path(@kase) %> | <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> | <a href="#">Top</a> </div> Thanks, Danny

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The first day of JavaOne is already over!

- by delabassee

In the past Sunday used to be a more relaxing day with ‘just’ some JavaOne activities going on. Sunday used to be a soft day to prepare yourself for an exhausting week. This is now over as JavaOne is expanding; Sunday is now an integral part of the conference. One of the side effect of this extra day is that some activities related to JavaOne and OpenWorld such as MySQL Connect are being push to start a day earlier on Saturday (can you spot the pattern here?). On the GlassFish front, Sunday was a very busy day! It started at the Moscone Center with the annual GlassFish Community Event where the Java EE 7 and GF 4 roadmaps were presented and discussed. During the event, different GlassFish users such as ZeroTurnaround (the JRebel guys), Grupo RBS and IDR Solutions shared their views on GF, why they like GF but also what could be improved. The event was also a forum for the GF community to exchange with some of the key Java EE / GlassFish Oracle Executives and the different GF team members. The Strategy keynote and the Technical keynote were held in the Masonic Auditorium later in the after-noon. Oracle executives have presented the plans for Java SE, Java FX and Java EE. As on-demand replays will be available soon, I will not summarize several hours of content but here are some personal takeaways from those keynotes. Modularity Modularity is a big deal. We know by now that Project Jigsaw will not be ready for Java SE 8 but in any case, it is already possible (and encouraged) to test Jigsaw today. In the future, Java EE plan to rely on the modularity features provided by Java SE, so Project Jigsaw is also relevant for Java EE developers. Shorter term, to cover some of the modular requirements, Java SE will adopt the approach that was used for Java EE 6 and the notion of Profiles. This approach does not define a module system per say; Profiles is a way to clearly define different subsets of Java SE to fulfill different needs (e.g. the full JRE is not required for a headless application). The introduction of different Profiles, from the Base profile (10mb) to the Full Profile (+50mb), has been proposed for Java SE 8. Embedded Embedded is a strong theme going forward for the Java Plaform. There is now a dedicated program : Java Embedded @ JavaOne Java by nature (e.g. platform independence, built-in security, ability easily talks to any back-end systems, large set of skills available on the market, etc.) is probably the most suited platform for the Internet of Things. You can quickly be up-to-speed and develop services and applications for that space just by using your current Java skills. All you need to start developing on ARM is a 35$ Raspberry Pi ARM board (25$ if you are cheap and can live without an ethernet connection) and the recently released JDK for Linux/ARM. Obviously, GlassFish runs on Raspberry Pi. If you wan to go further in the embedded space, you should take a look Java SE Embedded, an optimized, low footprint, Java environment that support the major embedded architectures (ARM, PPC and x86). Finally, Oracle has recently introduced Java Embedded Suite, a new solution that brings modern middleware capabilities to the embedded space. Java Embedded Suite is an optimized solution that leverage Java SE Embedded but also GlassFish, Jersey and JavaDB to deploy advanced value added capabilities (eg. sensor data filtering and) deeper in the network, closer to the devices. JavaFX JavaFX is going strong! Starting from Java SE 7u6, JavaFX is bundled with the JDK. JavaFX is now available for all the major desktop platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X). JavaFX is now also available, in developer preview, for low end device running Linux/ARM. During the keynote, JavaFX was shown running on a Raspberry Pi! And as announced during the keynote, JavaFX should be fully open-sourced by the end of the year; contributions are welcome!. There is a strong momentum around JavaFX, it’s the ideal client solution for the Java platform. A client layer that works perfectly with GlassFish on the back-end. If you were not convince by JavaFX, it’s time to reconsider it! As an old Chinese proverb say “One tweet is worth a thousand words!” HTML5, Project Avatar and Java EE 7 HTML5 got a lot of airtime too, it was covered during the Java EE 7 section of the keynote. Some details about Project Avatar, Oracle’s incubator project for a TSA (Thin Server Architecture) solution, were diluted and shown during the keynote. On the tooling side, Project Easel running on NetBeans 7.3 beta was demo’ed, including a cool NetBeans debugging session running in Chrome! HTML 5, Project Avatar and Java EE 7 deserve separate posts... Feedback We need your feedback! There are many projects, JSRs and products cooking : GlassFish 4, Project Jigsaw, Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (JSR 236), OpenJFX, OpenJDK to name just a few. Those projects, those specifications will have a profound impact on the Java platform for the years to come! So if you have the opportunity, download, install, learn, tests them and give feedback! Remember, you can "Make the Future Java!" Finally, the traditional GlassFish Party at the Thirsty Bear concluded the first JavaOne day. This party is another place where the community can freely exchange with the GlassFish team in a more relaxed, more friendly (but sometime more noisy) atmosphere. Arun has posted a set of pictures to reflect the atmosphere of the keynotes and the GlassFish party. You can find more details on the others Java EE and GlassFish activities here.

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SQLAuthority News – A Conversation with an Old Friend – Sri Sridharan

- by pinaldave

Sri Sridharan is my old friend and we often talk on GTalk. The subject varies from Life in India/USA, movies, musics, and of course SQL. We have our differences when we talk about food or movie but we always agree when we talk about SQL. Yesterday while chatting with him we talked about SQLPASS and the conversation lasted for a long time. Here is the conversation between us on GTalk. I have removed a few of the personal talks and formatted into paragraphs as GTalk often shows stuff out of formatting. Pinal: Sri, Congrats on running for the PASS BoD again. You were so close last year. What made you decide to run again this year? Sri: Thank you Pinal for your leadership in the PASS India Community and all the things you do out there. After coming so close last year, there was no doubt in my mind that I will run again. I was truly humbled by the support I got from the community. Growing up in India for over 25 years, you are brought up in a very competitive part of the world. Right from the pressure of staying in the top of the class from kindergarten to your graduation, the relentless push from your parents about studying and getting good grades (and nothing else matters), you land up essentially living in a pressure cooker. To survive that relentless pressure, you need to have a thick skin, ability to stand up for who you really are , what you want to accomplish and in the process stay true those values. I am striving for a greater cause, to make PASS an organization that can help people with their SQL Server careers, to make PASS relevant to its chapter members, to make PASS an organization that every SQL professional in the world wants to be connected with. Just because I did not get elected or appointed last year does not mean that these causes are not worth fighting. Giving up upon failing the first time is simply not in me. If I did that, what message would I send to those who voted for me? What message would I send to my kids? Pinal: As someone who has such strong roots in India, what can the Indian PASS Community expect from you? Sri: First of all, I think fostering a regional leadership is something PASS must encourage as part of its global growth plan. For PASS global being able to understand all the issues in a region of the world and make sound decisions will be a tough thing to do on a continuous basis. I expect people like you, chapter leaders, regional mentors, MVPs of the region start playing a bigger role in shaping the next generation of PASS. That is something I said in my campaign and I still stand by it. I would like to see growth in the number of chapters in India. The current count does not truly represent the full potential of that region. I was pretty thrilled to see the Bangalore SQLSaturday happen early this year. I would like to see more of SQLSaturday events, at least in the major metro cities. I know the issues in India are very different from the rest of the world. So the formula needs to be tweaked a little for it to work better in India. Once the SQLSaturday model is vetted out, maybe there could be enough justification to have SQLRally India. PASS needs to have a premier SQL event in that region. Going to USA or Europe for that matter is incredibly hard due to VISA issues etc. So this could be a case of where PASS comes closer to where the community is. Pinal: What portfolio would take on if you are elected to the PASS Board? Sri: There are some very strong folks on the PASS Board today. The President discusses the portfolios with the group and makes the final call on the portfolios. I am also a fan of having a team associated with the portfolios. In that case, one person is the primary for a portfolio but secondary on a couple of other portfolios. This way people on the board have a direct vested interest in a few portfolios. Personally, I know I would these portfolios good justice – Chapters, Global Growth and Events (SQLSat, SQLRally). I would try to see if we can get a director to focus on Volunteers. To me that is very critical for growth in the international regions. Pinal: This is an interesting conversation with you Sri. I know you so long time but this is indeed inspiring to many. India is a big country and we appreciate your thoughts. Sri: Thank you very much for taking time to chat with me today. Cheers. There are pretty strong candidates for SQLPASS Board of Elections this year. I know all of them in person and honestly it is going to be extremely difficult to not to vote for anybody. I am indeed in a crunch right now how to pick one over another. Though the choice is difficult, I encourage you to vote for them. I am extremely confident that the new board of directors will all have the same goal – Better SQL Server Community. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, DBA, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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Hiring New IT Employees versus Promoting Internally for IT Positions

Recently I was asked my opinion regarding the hiring of IT professionals in regards to the option of hiring new IT employees versus promoting internally for IT positions. After thinking a little more about this question regarding staffing, specifically pertaining to promoting internally verses new employees; I think my answer to this question is that it truly depends on the situation. However, in most cases I would side with promoting internally. The key factors in this decision should be based on a company/department’s current values, culture, attitude, and existing priorities. For example if a company values retaining all of its hard earned business knowledge then they would tend to promote existing employees internal over hiring a new employee. Moreover, the company will have to pay to train an existing employee to learn a new technology and the learning curve for some technologies can be very steep. Conversely, if a company values new technologies and technical proficiency over business knowledge then a company would tend to hire new employees because they may already have experience with a technology that the company is planning on using. In this scenario, the company would have to take on the additional overhead of allowing a new employee to learn how the business operates prior to them being fully effective. To illustrate my points above let us look at contractor that builds in ground pools for example. He has the option to hire employees that are very strong but use small shovels to dig, or employees weak in physical strength but use large shovels to dig. Which employee should the contractor use to dig a hole for a new in ground pool? If we compare the possible candidates for this job we will find that they are very similar to hiring someone internally verses a new hire. The first example represents the existing workers that are very strong regarding the understanding how the business operates and the reasons why in a specific manner. However this employee could be potentially weaker than an outsider pertaining to specific technologies and would need some time to build their technical prowess for a new position much like the strong worker upgrading their shovels in order to remove more dirt at once when digging. The other employee is very similar to hiring a new person that may already have the large shovel but will need to increase their strength in order to use the shovel properly and efficiently so that they can move a maximum amount of dirt in a minimal amount of time. This can be compared to new employ learning how a business operates before they can be fully functional and integrated in the company/department. Another key factor in this dilemma pertains to existing employee and their passion for their work, their ability to accept new responsibility when given, and the willingness to take on responsibilities when they see a need in the business. As much as possible should be considered in this decision down to the mood of the team, the quality of existing staff, learning cure for both technology and business, and the potential side effects of the existing staff. In addition, there are many more consideration based on the current team/department/companies culture and mood. There are several factors that need to be considered when promoting an individual or hiring new blood for a team. They both can provide great benefits as well as create controversy to a group. Personally, staffing especially in the IT world is like building a large scale system in that all of the components and modules must fit together and preform as one cohesive system in the same way a team must come together using their individually acquired skills so that they can work as one team. If a module is out of place or is nonexistent then the rest of the team will suffer until the all of its issues are addressed and resolved. Benefits of Promoting Internally Internal promotions give employees a reason to constantly upgrade their technology, business, and communication skills if they want to further their career Employees can control their own destiny based on personal desires Employee already knows how the business operates Companies can save money by promoting internally because the initial overhead of allowing new hires to learn how a company operates is very expensive Newly promoted employees can assist in training their replacements while transitioning to their new role within a company. Existing employees already have a proven track record in regards fitting in with the business culture; this is always an unknown with all new hires Benefits of a New Hire New employees can energize and excite existing employees New employees can bring new ideas and advancements in technology New employees can offer a different perspective on existing issues based on their past experience. As you can see the decision to promote an existing employee from within a company verses hiring a new person should be based on several factors that should ultimately place the business in the best possible situation for the immediate and long term future. How would you handle this situation? Would you hire a new employee or promote from within?

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Is software support an option for your career?

- by Maria Sandu

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 If you have a technical background, why should you choose a career in support? We have invited Serban to answer these questions and to give us an overview of one of the biggest technical teams in Oracle Romania. He’s been with Oracle for 7 years leading the local PeopleSoft Financials & Supply Chain Support team. Back in 2013 Serban started building a new support team in Romania – Fusion HCM. His current focus is building a strong support team for Fusion HCM, latest solution for Business HR Professionals from Oracle. The solution is offered both on Premise (customer site installation) but more important as a Cloud offering – SaaS. So, why should a technical person choose Software Support over other technical areas? “I think it is mainly because of the high level of technical skills required to provide the best technical solutions to our customers. Oracle Software Support covers complex solutions going from Database or Middleware to a vast area of business applications (basically covering any needs that a large enterprise may have). Working with such software requires very strong skills both technical and functional for the different areas, going from Finance, Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Sales to other very specific business processes. Our customers are large enterprises that already have a support layer inside their organization and therefore the Oracle Technical Support Engineers are working with highly specialized staff (DBA’s, System/Application Admins, Implementation Consultants). This is a very important aspect for our engineers because they need to be highly skilled to match our customer’s specialist’s expectations”. What’s the career path in your team? “Technical Analysts joining our teams have a clear growth path. The main focus is to become a master of the product they will support. I think one need 1 or 2 years to reach a good level of understanding the product and delivering optimal solutions because of the complexity of our products. At a later stage, engineers can choose their professional development areas based on the business needs and preferences and then further grow towards as technical expert or a management role. We have analysts that have more than 15 years of technical expertise and they still learn and grow in technical area. Important fact is, due to the expansion of the Romanian Software support center, there are various management opportunities. So, if you want to leverage your experience and if you want to have people management responsibilities Oracle Software Support is the place to be!” Our last question to Serban was about the benefits of being part of Oracle Software Support. Here is what he said: “We believe that Oracle delivers “State of the art” Support level to our customers. This is not possible without high investment in our staff. We commit from the start to support any technical analyst that joins us (being junior or very senior) with any training needs they have for their job. We have various technical trainings as well as soft-skills trainings required for a customer facing professional to be successful in his role. Last but not least, we’re aiming to make Oracle Romania SW Support a global center of excellence which means we’re investing a lot in our employees.” If you’re looking for a job where you can combine your strong technical skills with customer interaction Oracle Software Support is the place to be! Send us your CV at [email protected]. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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V MAX Anyone..Need to learn administrating VMAX

- by kevinmika

Hello All, This is going to be my first post here. I 'm working as an Administrator at SNI. I have been responsible for managing Celerra and Clariion,but this new environment has 2 VMAX boxes . Since, I don't have prior experience is managing symmetrix ,i am kinda stuck here ( no training as well) Can some body suggest me a proper link where i can learn the basics as well as the administrative part of V MAX. Thanks in advance for your help! Kevin

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Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

- by raul.goycoolea

Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:• The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;• Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;• Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;• Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;• Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;• Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;• Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;• Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:• Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;• Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;• Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;• Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; • Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;• Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;• Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer; This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future. The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

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Creating Item Templates as Visual Studio 2010 Extensions

- by maziar

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2010 Extension,T4 Template,VSIX,Item Template Wizard This blog post briefly introduces creation of an item template as a Visual studio 2010 extension. Problem specification Assume you are writing a Framework for data-oriented applications and you decide to include all your application messages in a SQL server database table. After creating the table, your create a class in your framework for getting messages with a string key specified. var message = FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess"); Everyone would say this code is so error prone, because message keys are not strong-typed, and might create errors in application that are not caught in tests. So we think of a way to make it strong-typed, i.e. create a class to use it like this: var message = Messages.ChangesSavedSuccess; in Messages class the code looks like this: public string ChangesSavedSuccess { get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess"); } } And clearly, we are not going to create the Messages class manually; we need a class generator for it. Again assume that the application(s) that intend to use our framework, contain multiple sub-systems. So each sub-system need to have it’s own strong-typed message class that call FrameworkMessages.Get method. So we would like to make our code generator an Item Template so that each developer would easily add the item to his project and no other works would be necessary. Solution We create a T4 Text Template to generate our strong typed class from database. Then create a Visual Studio Item Template with this generator and publish it. What Are T4 Templates You might be already familiar with T4 templates. If it’s so, you can skip this section. T4 Text Template is a fine Visual Studio file type (.tt) that generates output text. This file is a mixture of text blocks and code logic (in C# or VB). For example, you can generate HTML files, C# classes, Resource files and etc with use of a T4 template. Syntax highlighting In Visual Studio 2010 a T4 Template by default will no be syntax highlighted and no auto-complete is supported for it. But there is a fine visual studio extension named ‘Visual T4’ which can be downloaded free from VisualStudioGallery. This tool offers IntelliSense, syntax coloring, validation, transformation preview and more for T4 templates. How Item Templates work in Visual Studio Visual studio extensions allow us to add some functionalities to visual studio. In our case we need to create a .vsix file that adds a template to visual studio item templates. Item templates are zip files containing the template file and a meta-data file with .vstemplate extension. This .vstemplate file is an XML file that provides some information about the template. A .vsix file also is a zip file (renamed to .vsix) that are open with visual studio extension installer. (Re-installing a vsix file requires that old one to be uninstalled from VS: Tools > Extension Manager.) Installing a vsix will need Visual Studio to be closed and re-opened to take effect. Visual studio extension installer will easily find the item template’s zip file and copy it to visual studio’s template items folder. You can find other visual studio templates in [<VS Install Path>\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates] and you can edit them; but be very careful with VS default templates. How Can I Create a VSIX file 1. Visual Studio SDK depending on your Visual Studio’s version, you need to download Microsoft Visual Studio SDK. Note that if you have VS 2010 SP1, you will need to download and install VS 2010 SP1 SDK; VS 2010 SDK will not be installed (unless you change registry value that indicated your service pack number). Here is the link for VS 2010 SP1 SDK. After downloading, Run it and follow the wizard to complete the installation. 2. Create the file you want to make it an Item Template Create a project (or use an existing one) and add you file, edit it to make it work fine. Back to our own problem, we need to create a T4 (.tt) template. VS-Prok: Add > New Item > General > Text Template Type a file name, ex. Message.tt, and press Add. Create the T4 template file (in this blog I do not intend to include T4 syntaxes so I just write down the code which is clear enough for you to understand) <#@ template debug="false" hostspecific="true" language="C#" #> <#@ output extension=".cs" #> <#@ Assembly Name="System.Data" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.Data.SqlClient" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.Text" #> <#@ Import Namespace="System.IO" #> <# var connectionString = "server=Maziar-PC; Database=MyDatabase; Integrated Security=True"; var systemName = "Sys1"; var builder = new StringBuilder(); using (var connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString)) { connection.Open(); var command = connection.CreateCommand(); command.CommandText = string.Format("SELECT [Key] FROM [Message] WHERE System = '{0}'", systemName); var reader = command.ExecuteReader(); while (reader.Read()) { builder.AppendFormat(" public static string {0} {{ get {{ return FrameworkMessages.Get(\"{0}\"); }} }}\r\n", reader[0]); } } #> namespace <#= System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.CallContext.LogicalGetData("NamespaceHint") #> { public static class <#= Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(Host.TemplateFile) #> { <#= builder.ToString() #> } } As you can see the T4 template connects to a database, reads message keys and generates a class. Here is the output: namespace MyProject.MyFolder { public static class Messages { public static string ChangesSavedSuccess { get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ChangesSavedSuccess"); } } public static string ErrorSavingChanges { get { return FrameworkMessages.Get("ErrorSavingChanges"); } } } } The output looks fine but there is one problem. The connectionString and systemName are hard coded. so how can I create an flexible item template? One of features of item templates in visual studio is that you can create a designer wizard for your item template, so I can get connection information and system name there. now lets go on creating the vsix file. 3. Create Template In visual studio click on File > Export Template a wizard will show up. if first step click on Item Template on in the combo box select the project that contains Messages.tt. click next. Select Messages.tt from list in second step. click next. In the third step, you should choose References. For this template, System and System.Data are needed so choose them. click next. write down template name, description, if you like add a .ico file as the icon file and also preview image. Uncheck automatically add the templare … . Copy the output location in clip board. click finish. 4. Create VSIX Project In VS, Click File > New > Project > Extensibility > VSIX Project Type a name, ex. FrameworkMessages, Location, etc. The project will include a .vsixmanifest file. Fill in fields like Author, Product Name, Description, etc. In Content section, click on Add Content. choose content type as Item Template. choose source as file. remember you have the template file address in clipboard? now paste it in front of file. click OK. 5. Build VSIX Project That’s it, build the project and go to output directory. You see a .vsix file. you can run it now. After restarting VS, if you click on a project > Add > New Item, you will see your item in list and you can add it. When you add this item to a project, if it has not references to System and System.Data they will be added. but the problem mentioned in step 2 is seen now. 6. Create Design Wizard for your Item Template Create a project i.e. Windows Application named ‘Framework.Messages.Design’, but better change its output type to Class Library. Add References to Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizardInterface and envdte Add a class Named MessagesDesigner in your project and Implement IWizard interface in it. This is what you should write: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizard; using EnvDTE; namespace Framework.Messages.Design { class MessageDesigner : IWizard { private bool CanAddProjectItem; public void RunStarted(object automationObject, Dictionary<string, string> replacementsDictionary, WizardRunKind runKind, object[] customParams) { // Prompt user for Connection String and System Name in a Windows form (ShowDialog) here // (try to provide good interface) // if user clicks on cancel of your windows form return; string connectionString = "connection;string"; // Set value from the form string systemName = "system;name"; // Set value from the form CanAddProjectItem = true; replacementsDictionary.Add("$connectionString$", connectionString); replacementsDictionary.Add("$systemName$", systemName); } public bool ShouldAddProjectItem(string filePath) { return CanAddProjectItem; } public void BeforeOpeningFile(ProjectItem projectItem) { } public void ProjectFinishedGenerating(Project project) { } public void ProjectItemFinishedGenerating(ProjectItem projectItem) { } public void RunFinished() { } } } before your code runs replacementsDictionary contains list of default template parameters. After that, two other parameters are added. Now build this project and copy the output assembly to [<VS Install Path>\Common7\IDE] folder. your designer is ready. The template that you had created is now added to your VSIX project. In windows explorer open your template zip file (extract it somewhere). open the .vstemplate file. first of all remove <ProjectItem SubType="Code" TargetFileName="$fileinputname$.cs" ReplaceParameters="true">Messages.cs</ProjectItem> because the .cs file is not to be intended to be a part of template and it will be generated. change value of ReplaceParameters for your .tt file to true to enable parameter replacement in this file. now right after </TemplateContent> end element, write this: <WizardExtension> <Assembly>Framework.Messages.Design</Assembly> <FullClassName>Framework.Messages.Design.MessageDesigner</FullClassName> </WizardExtension> one other thing that you should do is to edit your .tt file and remove your .cs file. Lines 8 and 9 of your .tt file should be: var connectionString = "$connectionString$"; var systemName = "$systemName$"; this parameters will be replaced when the item is added to a project. Save the contents to a zip file with same file name and replace the original file. now again build your VSIX project, uninstall your extension. close VS. now run .vsix file. open vs, add an item of type messages to your project, bingo, your wizard form will show up. fill the fields and click ok, values are replaced in .tt file added. that’s it. tried so hard to make this post brief, hope it was not so long… Cheers Maziar

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VBA WinHTTPRequest and submitting forms

- by Hazerider

Hi. I spent all day yesterday trying to figure out how to submit a form using WinHTTPRequest. I can do it pretty easily with an InternetExplorer object, but the problem is that I need to save a PDF file that gets returned, and I am not sure how to do this with the IE object. Here is the relevant HTML code snippet: <div class="loginHome-left"> <fieldset> <h3>Log in Using</h3> <form> <label for="standardLogin" accesskey="s"> <input name="useLogin" id="standardLogin" value="standard" type="radio" checked="true">Standard Login</label>   <label for="rsaSecurID" accesskey="r"> <input name="useLogin" value="rsaSecur" type="radio" id="rsaSecurID" onclick="redirectLogin('ct_logon_securid');return false;">RSA SecurID</label>   <label for="employeeNTXP" accesskey="e"> <input name="useLogin" id="employeeNTXP" value="employee" type="radio" onclick="redirectLogin('ct_logon_external_nt');return false; "> Employee Windows Login<br></label> </form> <br> <div class="error">Error: ...</div><br> <form onSubmit="if(validate(this)) {formSubmit();} return false;" name="passwdForm" method="post" action="/UAB/ct_logon"> <input value="custom" name="pageId" type="hidden"> <input value="custom" name="auth_mode" type="hidden"> <input value="/UAB/ct_logon" name="ct_orig_uri" type="hidden"> <INPUT VALUE="" NAME="orig_url" TYPE="hidden"> <input value="" name="lpSp" type="hidden"> <label for="user"> <strong>Username</strong> </label> <input autocomplete="off" name="user" type="text" value="" class="txtFld" onkeypress="return handleEnter(this, event);"> <br> <label for="EnterPassword"> <strong>Password</strong>  (<a tabindex="-1" href="/UAB/BCResetWithSecrets">Forgot Your Password?</a>) </label> <input autocomplete="off" name="password" type="password" class="txtFld" onkeypress="return handleEnter(this, event);"> <INPUT id="rememberLogin" name="lpCookie" type="checkbox"> <label for="rememberLogin">Remember My Login Information</label><br> </form> <div class="right"> <br> <input type="image" src="/BC_S/images/bclogin/btn_login.gif" name="" value="Submit" onClick="if(validate(document.forms['passwdForm'])){formSubmit();}return false;"> </div> <div class="clearfix"></div> </fieldset> </div> In order to log in through InternetExplorer, I do the following: Sub TestLogin() Dim ie As InternetExplorer, doc As HTMLDocument, form As HTMLFormElement, inp As Variant Set ie = New InternetExplorer ie.Visible = True ie.navigate "https://URL of the login page" Do Until ie.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE Loop Set doc = ie.document For Each form In doc.forms If InStr(form.innerText, "Password") <> 0 Then form.elements("user").Value = "my_name" form.elements("password").Value = "my_password" Exit For Else End If Next 'This is the unnamed input with an image that is used to submit the form' doc.all(78).Click ie.navigate "https://url of the PDF" Do Until ie.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE Loop Dim filename As String, filenum As Integer filename = "somefile.pdf" filenum = FreeFile Open filename For Binary Access Write As #filenum Write #filenum, doc.DocumentElement.innerText Close #filenum ie.Quit Debug.Print Set ie = Nothing End Sub What I really would like to do is something along the lines of the following: Sub TestLogin3() Dim whr As New WinHttpRequest, postData As String whr.Open "POST", "https://live.barcap.com/UAB/ct_logon", False whr.setRequestHeader "User-Agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" whr.setRequestHeader "Connection", "Keep-Alive" whr.Send whr.WaitForResponse postData = "user=paschom1&password=change01" 'Or the following?' postData = "user=paschom1&password=change01&orig_url=&pageId=custom&auth_mode=custom&ct_orig_uri=/BC/dispatcher&lpSp=&lpCookie=off" whr.Send postData whr.WaitForResponse Debug.Print whr.responseText End Sub It just refuses to work though. Not sure if I need to use more setRequestHeader with Content-Form or something similar, and if I do, not sure what exactly I am supposed to pass it. If anyone has any advice regarding this, it would be hugely appreciated. I could probably use a perl module to do it, but I would rather keep it all in VBA if possible. Thanks, Marc.

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